[7] As the present work will come out in the midst of a vehement political contest, people may be led to suppose that the above was written expressly for the time. The writer therefore begs to state that it was written in the year 1854. He cannot help adding that he is neither Whig, Tory, nor Radical, and cares not a straw what party governs England, provided it is governed well. But he has no hopes of good government from the Whigs. It is true that amongst them there is one very great man, Lord Palmerston, who is indeed the sword and buckler, the chariots and the horses of the party; but it is impossible for his lordship to govern well with such colleagues as he has—colleagues which have been forced upon him by family influence, and who are continually pestering him into measures anything but conducive to the country’s honour and interest. If Palmerston would govern well, he must get rid of them; but from that step, with all his courage and all his greatness, he will shrink. Yet how proper and easy a step it would be! He could easily get better, but scarcely worse, associates. They appear to have one object in view, and only one—jobbery. It was chiefly owing to a most flagitious piece of jobbery, which one of his lordship’s principal colleagues sanctioned and promoted, that his lordship experienced his late parliamentary disasters.
[8] A fact.